Bill Evjen's Blog

Azure and Hardware

Bill Evjen — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:38:45 GMT

One of the cooler displays at PDC 2009 was a sample container that is something that is part of the Microsoft super data center strategy. To make Azure real, Microsoft has invested a ton into setting up the most state of the art data centers around the world. The idea is that Microsoft will provide a seamless means for customers to upload their applications, data, and capabilities to the cloud and leave the hardware, IT, and bandwidth management to them.

To meet these ends, Microsoft is building two rather significant data centers in each region of the world. Here is a video of the one in Chicago and some photos on one of the tours that someone took th ere.

Microsoft, for PDC 2009, wanted to show the development community what these data centers were like and instead of bringing the entire data center to Los Angeles, they did the next best thing and brought an entire container to the conference. The idea is that their data center has a rather modular setup and that these containers will be plugged in and run till a certain percentage of the servers fail and then they will interchange the faulty container for a new one. These containers are meant to be self running and self regulated.

It is interesting what the container has to do to regulate humidity and temperature.
** You can click on all the photos here to get a bigger view of them.

The container pulls in air through a series of air filters where the air then hits another type of filtered wall which gets water dropped through it to create a cool and humid means of keeping the contents of the container within a specific temperature and humidity level. This process is much like how the swamp-coolers of the mountain region of the United States have in a typical home. This air is then pulled through the server racks and then pulled out the back of the container. Though if things start getting too cooled, then the dampers in the upper part of the container open up a bit and let some of the air circulate back into the process thereby bringing the temperate back up to a level that they want.

Why so much focus on that temperature. Well, I was told the reason was that the server venders (which were Dell servers in this container) warranty the equipments only if it stays within a specific level of temperature and humidity. Here is a picture of some of these sensors:

Here, the sensor on the left monitors humidity and temperature both. There were four of these sensors and they were at the top part of the container. The sensor in the right photo was just a temperature sensor and there were eight of these. They were evenly spaced out so that there were some near the floor and some in the middle of the server racks.

This is a view of the space between the swamp-cooler system wall (on the left) and the air filtration wall of the right. In this photo, the air would move from the right to the left through the container. Here is a close up photo of the air filter wall:

Here is a photo of the server racks in the container:

Finally – here is the back side of the container. I’m not sure if the windows were for the display or if they are always there.

I like engineering and this was a fun tour. It will be a while before I get one of these in my homes! :)

Follow me on Twitter at @billevjen

Microsoft PDC 2009 – Day Two Keynote

Bill Evjen — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:36:54 GMT

The second day keynote at PDC 2009 in Lost Angeles was shared by Steven Sinofsky and Scott Guthrie. Steven is the President of Windows and Windows Live Division and it really must have been a great day for him as he came out for the first time in a major conference with the new Windows 7 launched and the old Vista problems just fading away into Microsoft’s past. There is a lot of excitement for Windows 7 and there is excitement for the new Windows 7 APIs that are available for developers to work with to take advantage of the new features that this new OS offers.

The big thing that Steven brought forth was the achievement that was Windows 7’s release. He was rather excited about how they developed this OS. One of the big changes in the development process was the introduction of the Windows 7 Engineering blog. This was a tool that the Windows 7 used to let people know what they were thinking and how things were going to work. The team got considerable comments from this blog and it helped shape what they were doing. For me, I did find it interesting in how open they were to their process and how they got the community involved in the process. I can see how that would be hard to do given the fact that Microsoft probably doesn’t want to give much information to their competitors on what they are doing. But they put out quite a bit of information that in the end – really made a difference.

There were also some interesting stats on the Win7 development process that Steven outlined. These included:

1,729,890 people pressed the send feedback reports button
91,521 external devices were plugged in
14,057 unique printers were plugged in
883,612 unique applications were used
8,107,258 installations were done
4,357156 installations of the RC were done
10,427,189 aggregated Windows Error Reports were sent in
4,753 code changes were made because of these WERs
6,114 SQM Measurement Points
~900,000,000 SQM Sessions (Logon to Logoff/Standby)
514,253,176 times the Start menu button was clicked in the last 6 months
46,447,784 times Aero Snap and Shake were used

It is important to note that these stats are only collected during the pre-RTM releases and are not something that Microsoft collects off of the production release of the OS.

After this, Steven then went through some hardware with another Microsoft worker and in the end help up a laptop – a not yet released Acer Aspire 1420P. It had the following stats: it is a convertible TabletPC with a Core2 Duo U2300 processor, Mobile Intel GS45 video, 2GB of DDR3 1066 MHz memory (supports up to 8GB), an 11.6" 1366x768 multitouch screen, webcam/mic, 3G WWAN, WLAN (supporting up to Draft-N), S/PDIF for digital speakers, 3 USB, 250GB HDD, card reader, and even an HDMI port. Then he said he was offering us a deal on the laptop for the price of FREE!

I was totally shocked! Here is me with my new laptop:

I see why Microsoft did this. They just introduced all the cool features that you can do with the new Windows 7 APIs including multitouch and more. Most developers don’t even have computers to deal with this or some of the other capabilities. If Microsoft really wants development in this space, there isn’t a better way to spur the development than by giving some of your community’s best developers the equipment to get the job done? Perfect.

Next up was ScottGu – all .NET developer’s hero. He continued on with the day 1 keynote message from Ray Ozzie and talked about the Silverlight everywhere message. The biggest message was the release of Silverlight 4 Beta. This is now available and includes a plethora of new features. These new features include things like:

Media
- Continuing to invest in the rich media stack
- Media stack is by far the most feature rich of any media stack out there
- Winter Olympics will be coming on Silverlight
- Adding
  - Webcam and microphone
  - Multicast
  - H.264 Output Protection
  - Offline DRM

Business Applications
- Printing
- Rich Text
- Clipboard Access
- Right click
- Mouse wheel
- Implicit styles
- VS 2010
- Drag/Drop
- Bidi & RTL - Right to left layout
- Updated Controls
- Data Binding - Support for string formatters
- Networking

Beyond the Browser
- Windowing APIs
- Notification Popups
- HTML Support
- Drop Target

Trusted applications
- Custom Window Chrome
- Local File System
- Cross-Site Networking
- Full Screen Keyboard
- Hardware Device Access
- COM Automation Support
- Office Integration

As you can see, there is a lot to this release! Though, as Ray Ozzie really said in the first keynote – this PDC was really about touching the “three screens” – mobile, PC, and TV&game console, etc. Ray pointed out that Silverlight was the technology to get you there and Scott spent his keynote really showcasing Silverlight and its future in this regards. Again, it is interesting to note that there wasn’t any mention of WPF and it’s role in this revolution.

Microsoft PDC 2009 – Main Messages

Bill Evjen — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:31:41 GMT

The first keynote of Microsoft’s PDC 2009 conference in Los Angeles has come and gone. Ray Ozzie kicked it off with some of the main messages that gave everyone insight into how Microsoft sees the direction of IT, programming, processes, and more. It was an interesting session that really focused on a few things, but most importantly it focused on Microsoft dedication to the Windows Azure platform and the big thing (to me), the idea that they are dedicated to making a seamless experience between mobile, PC, and TV.

There are a lot of questions in the air on which technologies people should use to build their applications. This is a big decision for programmers and architects alike. If you are a programmer, you have to make a dedication on which technologies you should study and learn and then use that knowledge to build solutions that will stand a test of (some) time. These applications should be meaningful and easy to use for the end user. They should appear modern. These are tough choices as you can use ASP.NET WebForms, ASP.NET MVC, Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation, Silverlight, and more. What to choose? Is one of these more strategic for Microsoft. Which technology should you choose and do you have the confidence that this technology has a strategic direction at Microsoft.

Is it part of Microsoft’s strategic direction? That is an important question developers ask themselves all the time. Will Microsoft have their best minds dedicated to evolving the technology? Will they continue to bring new and exciting (and sometimes revolutionary) features to the technology? Will tools, such as Visual Studio, evolve to handle the technology better with each release? These are questions I ask everyday and with everything I hear and read from Microsoft.

For this reason, I found it interesting that Ray Ozzie presented this slide at the conference.

So first off, it is a great goal to make a singular experience for developers across all these application types. I want to build an application that has as much reusable content/modules/components/etc as I move the application from Windows, to a device, to the TV and more. This is a great message from Microsoft. They are going to dedicate themselves to making a singular experience in building our applications in these different types of containers and help us get the most out of the code that we develop. I love this message and it is something I really wanted to hear from them.

The other message is quite shocking. Ray Ozzie pointed out that Silverlight is the technology that people should invest in. It is the client technology to get them to this realization of reusability. From this diagram, you can see the development tools of Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Studio to develop Silverlight-based applications to devices, the PC, and more. Ray continuously mentioned Silverlight has the means to the end and didn’t mention WPF as this means in the same paragraph. We are definitely seeing an evolution of Silverlight that has a lot of excitement behind it. We are definitely seeing a marketing and evangelism push behind this technology that seems so much bigger than anything else at Microsoft at the moment. Ray was asking developers to place their bets with Silverlight.

I said the message was quite shocking – not shocking in a bad way. I was just surprised as the Microsoft I’ve known from the past focused on a lot of different technologies to get to your end goals. The message was - “Look at your large tool chest of options”. That message seems to be gone now. We now seem to have a supertool for all our end goals. I really got this message – Silverlight.

Follow me at PDC on Twitter - @billevjen

PDC 2009 – Day One

Bill Evjen — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:43:13 GMT

I arrived to Los Angeles last night to be ready first thing Monday for my first day at the Microsoft Professional Developer’s Conference (PDC). Microsoft has really shortened this conference in regards to size and expense – that’s for sure. Obviously it has something to do with the economy. So, we’ll see how this conference will be done on the cheap. Doesn’t mean it has to be bad, but it should be different.

So for this year, this PDC is cut down from four days to three. Other things that are different include things like now, no breakfast served, there is no agenda’s printed and put with our badges, no more hard drives distributed, no backpacks provided, etc. I’m not complaining --- just stating.

So, since we are down to three days (starting tomorrow), this first day was for me, a day with the Microsoft Regional Directors. We got a nice all-day meeting with a lot of Microsoft Evangelism team on ….. [beep beep beep]. So you can see, it is some exciting times!

More to come from this weeks event. Stay tuned or follow me on Twitter at @billevjen.

Audio junkie – FooBar 2000

Bill Evjen — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:41:24 GMT

I always look for software that has a footprint smaller than what is offered from the standard software for folks on the market. For instance, I use Foxit rather than the Adobe Reader as the software download for this is 1mb rather than 80mb and hardly has anything running on your machine while Adobe Reader (IMHO) is spyware/junkware.

I am a complete audio junkie or audiophile (as some call it) and I have never been 100% happy with the standard Windows Media Player. It is a fine piece of software for most occasions, but I didn’t like how it organized my music and it didn’t provide much information on what was being played. The big focus seemed to be on a center screen that showed a light show or something with your music – something I could really care less about.

One day I found foobar2000 and decided to give this a try.

The download for this is only 3mb and running on my machine, it was only using 10mb of memory. Not bad. When I run Windows Media Player – it consumes 50mb of memory on my Windows 7 machine.

For the audio geek, when you play songs, you also can get a ton of information on what you are playing. For instance, at the bottom, you will constantly see the bit rate that is being played (it changes from moment to moment):

You also have a lot of details about the song selected:

Some of the bad about this software is that the default install has a pretty poor layout and it takes a lot of fiddling to get the items you want displayed. You can really customize the layout of this thing and there is a small third party market of add-ons for foobar2000 as you will see from their site. I changed the color, added the Album art section and added some extra pieces in the upper toolbar. Once you set this up – every time you open foobar2000, it will maintain the same layout. The other bad part is that there is no exporting of the settings – so you have to copy over the layouts by copying over the files from the Program Files folder of the application.

You point to a Music folder and you can organize your music in the following ways:

Another nice setting is to easily change how your playlists are played:

The great thing also is that this player supports a ton of audio formats including MP3, MP4, AAC, CD Audio, WMA, Vorbis, FLAC, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, Musepack, Speex, AU, and SND. You can also support more formats with some additional add-ons.

I’ve tried a lot of different audio players and this one, though not perfect, has been my favorite for a lot of reasons.

Follow me at @billevjen

St. Louis Day of .NET – Aug 28/29

Bill Evjen — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 09:40:50 GMT

Last year’s St. Louis Day of .NET was so successful that we were turning away people from the registration process (we were limited on the number of bodies we could have). This year’s event is at the Ameristar Casino – so that means more space! This year it was decided to run this conference over two days instead of one. There are currently 53 confirmed sessions for this event.

Last year was so much fun – I’m looking forward to this year’s event. REGISTER TODAY!

Windows 7 Desktop Gadgets

Bill Evjen — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 09:20:14 GMT

One of the features that has been available since the Vista days and is also contained in the Windows 7 release is Microsoft’s Desktop Gadgets. Gadgets have become quite the popular set of little tools that lots of people like to completely litter their desktops with. You can think of them as mini-applications that run on your desktop for common tasks that you perform or common pieces of information that you need. Microsoft is in no way the first to the scene with this nor the most popular. Though that might change as it is now easier than before to build gadgets and it is a little more in the end user’s face in using them in the world’s most popular OS. Windows 7 makes it very easy to add some Microsoft Desktop Gadgets to your desktop.

To add some of the already installed Microsoft Desktop Gadgets, you simple right-click on the desktop and you will find the option Gadgets in the provided menu. This will bring up a dialog of your installed gadgets. An example of this dialog is shown above. There are some default gadgets you can add right away without doing much searching. One that I always add from this default collection is the Calendar gadget. This is a simple gadget and doesn’t have much in the way of settings.

You can easily hover over the gadget and you will see a few control buttons that you can work with.

The Calendar gadget has the following buttons that are the three shown on the top. Other gadgets might also have the wrench that allows for more custom options. Here are some of the gadgets I like:

Digital Dutch Clock – Yeah, there is a default clock that is provided with the default install of Windows Vista or 7, but the Dutch Clock is better. It provides an additional digital time (with seconds) in the lower part of the face, as well as the day of the week and the date. It also allows you to name the clock – so you have multiple clocks on your desktop and you can name them for different cities or time zones. Like the default clock, there are multiple styles that you can use (the same ones).
Weatherbug – I am a total weather nut. This is a good weather control. Clicking on the arrows will also show a three day forecast in the control as well as a web cam from the area.
GMail Counter – If you have Gmail. Then this is a decent control and has a large list of custom sounds it can notify you with also when you get new mail.
All CPU Meter – This works with eight, quad, triple, and dual core machines. I am running a quad core machine and you can see the representation in the image above. I like this control a lot.
Wireless Network Meter – Like the All CPU Meter, but for the wireless world. I put this on my laptop. Show you the SSID, signal quality, IP address, external IP address, upload speed, download speed, and more. Not bad.
Facebook Explorer – I want to see my facebook notifications without having to go to the site all the time, so I have been trying this control. Not the greatest, but I haven’t found anything better yet.
Full Moon – I like this cause I’m a geek. It is cool to see how full the moon is on your computer desktop!

That’s all I really have. Let me know which ones you like in the comments. I’ll give them a try. Well that is the consumer end. You, as a developer can also build your own. Check out these resources:

Build Your Own Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget – online MSDN article.
MSDN Documentation Forum
Wrox’s Windows Vista Gadgets Programming

Windows 7 RTM Successfully Installed

Bill Evjen — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 01:59:57 GMT

I successfully installed the RTM version of Windows 7 last night. I got a copy of an .iso file for this due to my participation in the Windows 7 beta program. It was very nice of Microsoft to provide everyone that participated in the invited portion of the beta program to a free copy of Windows 7 Ultimate! Thanks Microsoft for that.

I downloaded the 64-bit version of Windows 7 and burned that to a disc and booted up my machine to this disc. I have to say that it was just a little confusing at first as I was presented with text that stated - “Choose a CD-ROM boot option” and from there, my options were a number 1) or a number 2). There were no, absolutely no descriptions of what #1 or #2 meant. It was like the old TV game show where the contestants were asked to choose their prize from what was behind door #1 or door #2. I chose #1, as whatever it was, Microsoft would probably say that the most popular choice would be the first --- so that seemed like good logic and that is what I went with.

So, after that brief hiccup, the install worked just fine. The OS install had to reboot about 2 times, so when it first did that, I hadn’t removed the DVD from the drive and it came right back up to “Choose a CD-ROM boot option”. I really thought I would be starting the entire process over again by making that selection again – so I took the DVD out of the drive, rebooted, and let it finish the install process. From there, everything went fine with the install. It was fast and it found all the drivers that it needed. I didn’t have to install not even one driver myself. The install process found everything that it needed. AMAZING! I love this OS.

I’ll try to post more about the OS as I work through it.

Technorati Tags: win7,windows7,windows,microsoft,operatingsystem,os,install

Your company won’t be as competitive staying on Windows XP

Bill Evjen — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:11:14 GMT

It has been known for a little while now that Microsoft’s latest OS, Windows 7, will be released to the computer makers to install as the machine OS for the computers they are getting ready to sell in late July. Then later in the Fall (OCT 22nd), it will be available to the public for purchase. This is welcome news for many who were not as successful with Vista and are quite tired of Windows XP.

I was definitely in that camp. I have a lot of computers that I run at home and they were all Windows XP – all but one machine. That machine was a Vista box that I used for my writing, but it really was limited to that. I tried many times to switch completely to Vista, but in all the times I tried – I failed for one reason or another. Whether it was performance or issues with my VPN software for work – I just couldn’t make the change. Windows 7 has been a complete breadth of fresh air! It is a wonderful operating system. It is fast, and is now running without incident on all my computers. I have said goodbye to Windows XP.

It was recently reported in the press that big business would be waiting till the next release (after Windows 7) till they do the big upgrade of their users from Windows XP to Windows 7. The stat given in the press that it was something like 60% or more said that they would wait for the next release of the OS.

I have to say that I find this to be not so accurate. I don’t think that will be the case myself. I really question that stat. I DO think that many companies aren’t going to rush to change all their users from Windows XP to Windows 7 because of the huge issues that Microsoft and the community had with Windows Vista. And because of these issues, I do believe that companies will wait a bit to see how the reaction in the community is with the latest OS release. They will wait to see which software in the community has issues running on Windows 7, what the main issues are, which security issues come to light, and more. Some companies may flat-out wait till a service pack for the OS is released before they make the move. I can see this conservative move to wait to see how things pan out – but a reaction to wait to the next OS? Come on. That won’t happen.

I do believe that the companies that stay on Windows XP and Office 2003 will be at a competitive disadvantage to their competitors that make the upgrade. I was a strong user of these older technologies and I am now a strong user of the next generation of these technologies (Windows 7 and Office 2007) and I do have to say that I am a lot more productive, quick, and on top of my workload using these new stars. There was a slight learning curve in moving from XP and Office 2003 to the new world of Windows 7 and Office 2007 (soon 2010), though I have to say that it was an exciting lessen and brought a new level of enthusiasm in looking at your work world in a new way – a better way to communicate your messages and ideas and a quicker way to organize your applications and tasks. Really, the companies that don’t make the move in the next year are going to be at risk of entering a stagnant plane of thought within their organization.

The new OS and Office suite will bring the new energy your firm needs. I highly recommend the move.

Zune HD to compete with ITouch

Bill Evjen — Fri, 29 May 2009 08:43:38 GMT

Microsoft just recently made some announcements that they will be releasing the new Zune HD. The new Zune HD will also support the now much loved multi-touch capabilities that has made the ITouch and the IPhone as famous as they are.

From the image above you can see that the new Zune HD is going for an advanced look with the beveled edges. I owned a Zune first generation and then I bought myself a Zune (120GB version) later. I really did like it mainly because of the very large screen that I could watch video podcasts on. This was something that wasn’t as good with the IPod and other items out there in the world. I am looking forward to the new Zune HD and would love to review it --- but it is hard to buy another device right when I got this new Zune 120 GB.

The one thing that sounds pretty exciting with the new Zune HD is the HD radio built into it. The older Zunes also have radio in them and it is nice feature to have – but now with HD radio! The other nice thing about the Zune is that you have some pretty good Zune software in working with you music collections and in getting them on the device. I hear a lot of constant complaints from friends about Apple’s software – and it is true that the Zune software was absolute garbage in its first version – but now you will find that the new software from Microsoft for the Zune is quite nice (too bad they didn’t write it in WPF (my side note)).

Another nice feature you will find on the Zune is that list of games is growing and they aren’t half bad. Though, currently, they don’t seem to compare with all the new software that you can get on the Apple IPhone or ITouch. Apple is just so good at this stuff that it is amazing. You would think that putting out a device would be simple – but as everyone from Sony, to Microsoft, to Nokia and other are trying to catch up with the IPod, Apple comes along with something that makes the IPod look dumb. The IPhone and the ITouch were just simply revolutionary. From the multi-touch, to the balancing and directional capabilities, to the new IPhone/ITouch store that enable software developers to make some serious money and use Apple’s distribution network – it was outstanding and hard to beat. If anyone can catch up – it would be Microsoft.

They do need to try and people shouldn’t say that they aren’t capable of this. Nobody thought they would have a chance in the console market in that the competition was Nintendo and Sony – but they have done an outstanding job with the original Xbox and the new Xbox 360. They dedicated themselves to doing this and they made a splash.

Why did they enter this market (the console market)? It was really due to the fact that the console was something that could have become the home computer – displacing the desktop home computer as we know it today (this is still possible). Microsoft, for their own survival – need to dominate this space. When it comes to the IPhone/ITouch devices, this is another area that is threatening.

There currently is a fight between the netbook world and the device world (with the netbooks really starting to dominate), and Microsoft needs to capture both of these areas. They are doing an outstanding job in the netbook world as it looked like Linux might do well as they ran well on computers with limited capabilities – but the new Windows 7 OS is something that has been designed rather well to work on computers (such as netbooks) that have these limiting factors. So they are pretty well placed in this arena.

Well, anyway, the new Zune HD is a step in the right direction. For me – it will come to the software that people can use on these devices. Apple will be a tough catch. Let’s see what happens.

PS – it is interesting that they saw the need to name the category ‘marketplace’ (look in the above image) and not simply ‘market’, so that it would fit into the screen! Oh well.